Hudson River Watch Co.

Hudson River Watch Co. is a New York-based company that makes handsome, high-quality and affordable watches. What really makes their timepieces unique is that their inspiration comes from all over the city—each watch is named after a Manhattan street, and draws its look from items like vintage stopwatches, ship telegraph dials and even cigar humidors. On the inside, Swiss movement keeps time while hardwearing stainless steel cases protect the insides. The watches are also water-resistant up to 150 feet, and each come with stainless steel or leather bands (NATO straps are also available). They've just launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund their debut, so we caught up with co-founder Lauren Willis and talked about how the city informs the brand and what makes a good watch.

The Sutton Place

What makes a quality timepiece?

Watches are extremely precise instruments; so, to create a good one, every component needs to be meticulously created and applied to ensure precision. Our watches utilize high-quality Swiss movements for accuracy and reliability, surgical grade stainless steel cases for durability, and sapphire crystal lenses for the highest scratch-resistance. We believe that quality materials, clean lines and a versatile, classic look make for a timepiece we would want to own—and that's what we set out to create.

How does the city inspire you?

We've spent the last 6 years in New York and we love the city's diversity, its variety, the gleaning metal of its buildings and the energy and history of each neighborhood. And one of the great things about being inspired by such a diverse place is that we are not confined to one style.

The Cranberry Street

Those straps look pretty nice,what are the customization options for a watch?

All of our watches come with a leather strap, with the exception of Fulton Street (which comes with a black rubber strap), and Milligan Place (which comes with a stainless steel band). However, we love wearing the watches with different straps each day, for different occasions. We plan to sell straps individually as well (Nato, leather, rubber), so that everyone has the option of customizing their watches and wearing them in different ways. On Kickstarter, most of our rewards packages will include additional straps with watch purchases.

The Fulton Street watch looks really cool, tell us about the interesting face.

Fulton Street is probably our most unique watch. The face is based on old engine order telegraphs. These telegraphs were found on the bridge of the steamship and were used by the captain to communicate the desired speed with the engine room. We loved the look of these nautical dials and decided to make a watch based on them. Fulton comes with a great looking rubber strap, but also looks amazing with many of our NATO straps.